


You With The Empty Eyes

by WhereTheMoonShinesBright



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Backstory, Gen, I love my dad, Worldbuilding, atheism?, pre game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhereTheMoonShinesBright/pseuds/WhereTheMoonShinesBright
Summary: Was he called Jeralt then? It was so long ago even he at times failed in his memory.He was a crestless peasant, who could hold a blade as well as he could a sickle. Not a youngest or oldest child. Not viable to inherit anything, or be given pity. The only thing he could inherit was by the strength of his own hand. The only pittance given, by that of an employer.(The Incredibly Long and Trying Life of Jeralt Reus Eisner)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Jeralt was barely 18 when he first became a mercenary… that had been… what year had it been? It was long ago, past a time worthy of remembering. 

Was he called Jeralt then? It was so long ago even he at times failed in his memory. 

He was a crestless peasant, who could hold a blade as well as he could a sickle. Not a youngest or oldest child. Not viable to inherit anything, or be given pity. The only thing he could inherit was by the strength of his own hand. The only pittance given, by that of an employer. 

There were things you learned, as a mercenary. Of course fighting was the first of them. You also learned that there was a deep and dividing line between the things you could control, and the things you could not. 

Perhaps Jeralt had already learned that. It was how he ended up in his predicament, a mercenary, unmarried, no land or home. And so he was well into his 30’s when it… happened. 

Because that was all it really could be called. There was no way to choose some things. Sometimes they just happened to you.

The contract was a simple one. The mercenary captain Jeralt had been working for has accepted an escort mission from the church. This happened from time to time, of course. If the church was transporting goods that were overly valuable, or trying to be discreet in their business, they would often hire trusted mercenaries rather than displaying their own knights or banners. 

It was sensible enough. Something Jeralt could respect.

The route they were taking to Garreg Mach was out of the way, across the bridge of Myrddin, but not coming back the same way. The mercenary group would, in fact, be traveling almost all the way around Lake Teutates in order to reach their destination. 

“It might be safer to take a boat, if security is the concern,” he had said to the captain. He received nothing but a withering glance, and a furrowed brow that implied he was taking the suggestion to heart.

It did not take long for the captain to wipe that doubt away, and continue on with his debriefing. “We really can not know what dangers there might be during transport. We will establish a guard rotation before we reach Enbarr. This will persist whether we are camping or stopping in town.”

The captain offered nothing to sate the groans and small protests that had arisen in response. 

The job would take at least an entire month. An entire month with irregular sleep, irregular meals, and no momentary reprieve. 

“I’m sure we’ll all feel better once we see the pay out, right?” Jeralt offered, cooly.

The captain nodded to indicate as much, and what mercenaries hadn’t walked away already rumbled quietly in their approval.

For all the was being asked of them, the captain did not answer any questions about the cargo they were escorting.

A woman. 

She met them outside the cathedral, just a few blocks from the royal palace. She was veiled, all in dark blue. It couldn’t, Jeralt thought, have been comfortable wearing all of that during the many hours it had taken the mercenary band to pass the checkpoints of the inner city. 

More than that, it was out of fashion. Very, very out of fashion. It was possible that she was an older woman. The woman did not walk, ride, or carry herself like an older woman. 

On the other hand, perhaps it was not a woman at all. She did not, after all, speak. The bishop of the church handled all conversation with the captain on her behalf, and once she was placed in one of the wagons, she had no reason to say anything. 

By the first night, there were whispers of who she might be. Jeralt’s personal belief was that their passenger was one of the cardinals, summoned to make the archbishop’s acquaintance. No one knew the identity of the cardinals though, so why would they need to disguise themselves.

She ate dinner with the captain, so she would not be inquired about. Not that they were given leave to speak to her anyways. Some of the younger men, merchant’s sons, ruffled at that. The older mercenaries swore, and did little to discourage the younger one’s ire. And Jeralt only supplied that, if they weren’t allowed to know anything about their mysterious accompaniment, it was probably in their best interest that they didn’t know anything either.

It wasn’t until the second week, that something finally happened. Because you really had no choice over some of these things. Sometimes, things just happened to you. 

It was an attack. It had seemed to be bandits at first. Then they were surrounded. Then they were overrun. 

In the deep fog of the western forests, it had been difficult to estimate how many were attacking them. It had seemed to be a small sum, but for every combatant that feel, three more voices rang through the fog promising vengeance. 

It was something like a siege, if the deep fog were fortress walls. There seemed to be a reserve of assassins out in the woods, and they were only deployed once their comrades had fallen. 

Many had been fighting through an encroaching cloud of miasma, and they fell like emptied sacks of grain to the forest floor with their weapons lifted at nothing. 

A brilliance finally flooded through the forest, emanating from their ward, demanding the fog and the miasma clear as though she herself were the sun. 

It was dazzling.

Jeralt caught his gaze and turned it once more to the enemy, feeling foolish in his lapse of thought. Ingratiated that he had been reminded of himself before the enemy dragging at the end of his lance had. Their attackers, unnerved and struck by the display of the veiled woman’s power, were easy to chase off after that. 

There had been little time to think as he rejoined the captain’s side. He was aware of only a few things. The captain’s sword in the veiled woman’s hand, the captain dangling from his saddle while his horse fidgeted restlessly, and the assailants who had crept in as the mercenaries had fallen. 

Those who had chased back the assailants on Jeralt’s side made quick work of their new enemies, and Jeralt made straight for the veiled woman. 

Her movements were practiced, but clearly encumbered by her heavy garments. Jeralt had only a moment to think before it happened. There was a move she was not going to block, one that he would block for her, but he had not seemed to realize as he had pushed himself in the blades path how he had instinctively planned to do it. 

He felt the pain, sharp and cut deep into his right bicep. He felt his right hand give up grip on his lance, and used the momentum of the drop to swing down with his left. Whatever good the blunt flat of the spear head did, the assailant fell to the ground. 

Jeralt kept up his half hearted swings, and when the field seemed to clear he fell to his knees.

The only thought that had come to him as he reached the ground was that, after two weeks of a long march, perhaps he could finally rest. 

Archbishop Rhea was as verdant as the early summer grass. She was less resplendent than he had expected the most important person in all of Fódlan to be, yet even through the haze of his pain, he figured she was probably dressed with less grandeur in lieu of travel. 

The dreams began as soon as he slept. Dreams of filtered sunlight, the warm sun, and the sound of his mother singing to the cattle as they were led from their stable in the spring.

And in his head, he knew what that meant. He would be with her soon, and he felt hard-pressed to feel sorry for wishing he had come sooner.

He followed the sound out to the pasture. His clothes were stiffer, than he remembered them being. He knew if he looked down, he would see it was blood. He could feel his arm pulse, and felt that if he observed that he would see that it was reduced to flesh falling cleanly off the muscle in his arm, like the fruits from the southern empire. 

The singing cleared, became closer, and yet he could not quite figure out where his mother could have gone. He did not hear any of the girls lowing out in the field either. 

When his eyes opened, he did not remember the reality of his situation, so much as it began to consolidate itself into one reality.

A woman sat above him, cradling his head, soothing circles tracing at his scalp. Her hair shone in a glow of perfect starlight, though the sky above was dark. 

“You’ve finally awoken.” Her voice was like moonlight on water. “You saved my life, and I am forever in your debt.”

The pain of his arm was no more present now than it had been in his dream. He closed his eyes, an old trick he had. Hoping if he were able to fall asleep in this dream, he would wake up once more.

“Stay awake,” her tone was soft. It was not commanding and yet, it did not seem like she was accustomed to being disobeyed.

In betrayal to himself, his mouth opened. He was unable to speak. He tried to muster the words forth, but lacked the energy. 

“Do not speak” her ministrations continued, and when she glowed with that sun-brilliant light, he finally recognized her as the veiled woman. “Your assailants, my enemies, are all fallen. You have nothing to fear here.”

The burst of energy dulled the pain in Jeralt’s arm. 

“The blade you took for me was poisoned, and you are dying. I have tried to drain the poison from your blood, but you do not have much left to give,” the immediacy of Jeralt’s panic must have shifted his face, because she continued shortly after, “Calm yourself. You do not have to die. I can offer you salvation.”

“What? Prayers of the goddess?”

“More than that.” She was unperturbed by his sardonic tone. “I can offer you my blood, at least some of it. You will be saved, but the life you have had will not be a life you can return to afterwards. It is not a decision that I can make for you.”

It was a cryptic answer, and perhaps unsettling, but Jeralt was decidedly not a priest of a healer. “It seems like quite the inconvenience,” his voice had cleared back into exhaustion. He realized, quite clearly, he was running out of time for glibness.

Yet the woman smiled. “Perhaps. The other mercenaries told me how you cleared the western flank, and chose to stay instead of running. You immediately came to my aid, though I am a stranger and have nothing now that I can offer you.” Her soothing touch ran healing magic through him once more. “What I am offering is not something that can be done often, but I must believe if there was anyone worth saving, it would be you.”

Jeralt felt the immediacy of the situation, creating tension behind his eyes. He let them be closed by the woman’s hand, and with finality replied, “Alright, do what you can.”

  
  


When next Jeralt woke, he found himself as though transported. Through time, through space.

He felt no pain. He felt no need to stretch and reorient himself from what, he thought assuredly, must have been a long slumber. 

The world around him was cool, and dry, and quiet. 

The first thing that stole his attention were the walls. The only place in his home village that had held such walls was the cathedral, made of stone. But the mortar here was thicker, the stones cut with more precision. A structure that had been built without the concern of needing to house those through coming storms, constructed without heed of summer’s end. 

The sun shone brightly through the unshuttered windows, and yet there wasn’t a draft in the room. 

Jeralt lifted his hands to the pane, surprised to meet a solid material. 

Glass windows. A place with glass windows. He was very clearly no longer amidst the ramshackle villages in southern Fòdlan. Nor was he in the small fishing towns he would have been near during the last job. 

The last job. 

So he wasn’t dead. The woman had kept her promise and now he was here? What about the rest of the mercenaries?

He thought for a moment to dress and leave immediately. The least he could do was regain his bearings. If he was in a cathedral he had to be in Enbarr, or Fhirdiad even.

And then the answer came to him, with the tolling of church bells. 

He surveyed the room. Cloth had been stacked to a waiting chair next to the bed, emblazoned with the crest of Seiros. 

He was at Garreg Mach. Whatever else was to be said, they had made it.

And with that, he realized there was little choice over what to do next. He dressed himself in the white and red tunic, sashed the sword he had been given at his waist, and opened the door.

  
That was the only thing left to be done.


	2. Chapter 2

Of the times Jeralt had been to Garreg Mach, he had never been allowed within the monastery proper. The only person who carried the proper papers to do such was the captain. Aside from that, they had never been there during the goddess festival. And once again, aside from that, mercenaries were hardly considered the religious sort unless they happened to be trained at the monastery. That, supposedly, was within the goddesses blessings.

Even if he had been allowed, there were better things that could be done in a normal town. There were taverns, and inns, and markets. It was the better choice if you weren’t particularly religious, and Jeralt had never considered himself particularly attuned to the goddesses teachings. 

Surely, he still thanked the goddess when the odds turned to his favor, and cursed her over broken bones and fallen comrades, but that had never had any weight behind it. It was easier to give credence to things you didn’t understand to someone you could never possibly meet or see. 

And so, he had never actually seen the monastery from the inside. It was altogether more… just _more_ than he could have envisioned. 

For a building made out of stone, he felt as though he were walking out in the sunlight. He had never seen so many in-tact windows. The halls were lined with them, and he was certain that the rooms he passed had ones with barring just as intricate as the room he had been left in. 

The mortar was immaculate, there were no drafts, the doors were without any rot. It seemed like the monastery was, truly, untouched by time. 

Jeralt felt instinctively that he shouldn’t trust it. 

When he exited his room, he had been immediately greeted by a priest, not a guard, who was to take him to the archbishop. He had seen her before, once, during a different mission. He was surprised he’d recalled her face for a moment in his poison-addled state. Everything else, after that point, seemed to span in his mind with in the same second of his memory. A second which seemed, impossibly, to stretch on for hours. 

The walk down the corridor to the Archbishop’s audience chamber seemed to occupy a similar space. 

The closer they got to the audience chamber, the less real the world seemed. The stone work of the floor became intricate, and then the priest opened a door to a large chamber which was made of different stone altogether— marble and some sort of black glass, and fitted with carved statues with gilded details.

Then just as quickly, Jeralt was ushered into a smaller room which was equally as lavish and asked to wait. 

There were two divans, facing each other from across a table that was slowly being fitted with tea and food by other priests and sometimes poorly dressed children who would fixate on him for a moment when they came in and a moment when they left.

It occurred to him that perhaps he was meant to help. It was only after he received a few rejections, and surprised gasps by various people that he realized he was meant to sit down.

He paused for a moment. It wouldn’t be too gracious for him to stain the white satin on the divans with anything that might be lingering on his clothes— but he wasn’t wearing _his_ clothes. He didn’t sit, but he did allow a tentative hand to rest on the chairs back. 

“It’s good to see you’re finally awake.”

He didn’t realize when the Archbishop entered. Her appearance was the first thing that was not overmarked by grandeur. 

“Thank you for keeping me under your care,” he lifted his fist above his hear and bowed deeply. Jeralt at least was trained well enough how to please someone who had money and power.

There was a moments pause as Rhea sat down on one of the divans and looked toward Jeralt expectantly.

The gears in his brain were still turning, “I was wondering…”

“Please,” Rhea cut in, tone sharp in the way his mother’s might have been when he picked at old scabs. And similarly, when she continued it was with a more gentle, “I’m sure you have many questions, but I insist they wait until after you’ve eaten something. You were fed as much as you could be while asleep, but you’re surely hungry now.” 

And wasn’t that true? On a normal day Jeralt could eat enough for 3 men, but now, with all of the food laying so close within reach— it had no distinguishable smell. His hunger had turned it into something confusingly nauseating, threatening him to not eat too much or too little. 

He still couldn’t quite bring himself to sit on something so… expensive, though. To ruin anything, or to do something distasteful in front of the archbishop… It had been different when they were traveling and her identity had been withheld, when they were all eating and sleeping in the dirt.

“Don’t worry about your manners, for now,” she seemed to read his mind. “I will be more upset if you deny yourself my hospitality. This is mostly for you, after all.”

Withering under her gaze, he finally sat. “Thank you, your grace.”

“Please, call me Rhea,” she took to pouring the tea as soon as he sat. “Even Lady Rhea is better. I am very rarely called ‘Your Grace’.”

Despite the humility in her tone, she did not blush or veil her eyes. She was steadfast in all her movements, filling a plate and handing it to Jeralt across the table before he could embarrassedly pick at the food on the painted porcelain plates. 

After he had eaten two plates, she stopped snuffing his attempts at conversation.  
  
“What happened to the rest of the mercenaries?”

She paused for a moment over her own cup of tea, setting it down. She gave him a calculating gaze, which settled into something like assuredness. “The captain was badly injured. Many of the other mercenaries were badly inured as well. I had a messenger ride ahead, and had priests brought to tend to them. The rest made the trip to Garreg Mach.”  
  
“With me?”

“With you. Your care was a little more urgent, even after I was able to heal you.”

Jeralt shook his head. “And I’m assuming I’ll have to find them before I can rejoin them.”  
  
Lady Rhea’s mouth tilted downward once more. “That is a matter we need to discuss.”

There was the clink of porcelain as a priest came in and refilled the water of the teapot, heating it with some incantation. He was able to recognize that Rhea was waiting until they were alone once more before continuing to converse.

“The mercenary band moved on a week after we arrived. That was a week ago,” Rhea refilled her cup. “I told them they shouldn’t anticipate you rejoining them.”

Jeralt felt something in him stall, the minute noises around them and outside becoming louder and louder, until he pushed them away. “Now hold on here. I’m clearly not dead. They don’t think I am, right?”

Rhea’s eyes warmed on him. “Of course not. But your situation has changed considerably. Please allow me to explain,

“You now bare the crest of Saint Seiros. The crest aided in your rejuvenation. You may think of it as a token of gratitude. I would not be alive were it not for you after all. However, now that you carry it within you, your life can not quite be the same. It was an experiment, I had been meaning to try on one of the knights here at the monastery. I could not decide on a knight who would receive this gift, nor anyone at the eastern or western churches, nor anyone at the old cathedrals throughout Fódlan. It is not a gift that can be given lightly.”  
  
“Then why me?”  
  
“Perhaps it was fate,” Jeralt could have laughed, but she seemed so sincere. “I do not regret my decision. You are the kind of person I was looking for. Someone who can keep the peace with ease, someone charismatic, someone trustworthy and selfless. That it was you who put yourself in front of the blade was not chance.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t. You paid me to do it,” 

“I paid you to deliver me to Garreg Mach discreetly, not to die to ensure I got there. Your own virtue saved me from harm’s way.”

“Trust me, I’ve hardly lived my life by choosing the path of virtue.”  


“Perhaps. Perhaps those who are virtuous do not choose to be. In any case, my path has lead to you.” Rhea filled another plate with food, and kept it for herself this time. “I would appreciate if you would let me observe you for a while. While you are being observed you could, perhaps, even be educated to serve as one of the Knights of Seiros.”  


“I’m…” Jeralt was beginning to pick at his food now, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I don’t know much about the church.”

Rhea grabbed his hand, before his nail bit into the crust of his bread. “There will be plenty of time for you to learn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this might be? Longer than I thought. Just because I had expected this to be 1/4th of a chapter and it's over 1,500 words now and I'm not going to post a 6,000 word chapter. 
> 
> So. 
> 
> If you would like to talk to me or if you have any questions you can reach me at @thefrufruit on twitter.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got some time now to be writing again! I do also have a fever though, so that's not great. 
> 
> I'll be updating and posting some other fics between today and tomorrow. 
> 
> Want to talk? Got some questions?  
> You can reach me @chinupking on twitter


End file.
